Proposing the motion that “Printed paper is the preferred medium of record, whilst also a sustainable marketing communications format”, were champions of print Richard Pepper, founder of greetings card service Funky Pigeon, and Jonathan Tame, managing director of Two Sides.

Faced with a room full of printers, the opposition had a difficult challenge. John Booth, data centre expert and founder of sustainable IT consultancy Carbon3IT, was seconded by Emma Newman, chief revenue officer EMEA of digital advertising firm PubMatic.

Before the debaters entered the room, a first count was held: around 42 were for the motion, 24 against.

Pepper opened the debate with an appeal to print’s longstanding supremacy as a medium, before pivoting into an argument that human beings simply engage with the medium better than they do with the digital word.

“When you read digitally,” he said, “you absorb about 500 words before you wander off to other things. But when you’re looking at the printed word, you absorb it much better. 

“The words they use are ‘deep learning’ and ‘shallow learning’: deep learning comes from reading books.”

Pepper then shared the story of a cyber attack on Funky Pigeon, which nearly crippled the business several years after Pepper had left.

He said: “It got hacked with ransomware, and [the hackers] wanted a million dollars. They didn’t pay it.

“[Funky Pigeon] lost all its images, and it cost the company about £20m in turnover – and that sort of thing happens everywhere. The White House has been hacked; the British Library has been hacked, and it still hasn’t recovered today. Is digital as strong as we want it to be, for a medium of record?”

Booth was up next, defending digital media.

Acknowledging print’s advantages in certain areas – such as in highly targeted marketing, the tangible impact of print, and near-universal deliverability.

“But,” he said, “all of these advantages are also available in digital media.

“Historically, printed paper is the preferred medium of record in some sectors, such as legal and banking. I think it can be safely said that both are stuck in the 20th and 19th centuries.”

Booth then spread before the audience a raft of examples of how industries have chosen to digitalise, from internet banking to libraries, to legal papers.

“Digital media enables real-time updates, keeping users informed of the latest news events and developments as they happen, ensuring information is up-to-date and relevant.

“In print media, today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip-paper,” he quipped.

The battle between print and digital over each medium’s environmental credentials fell largely to the seconds.

Tame, firing off facts and figures for print’s sustainability, cut into the supposition that digital media is good for the environment.

“Consumers’ perception of digital media is that it’s consequence free. You can’t see an email, or a web search – it isn’t a physical object,” adding companies’ push to go paperless, often sold on environmental grounds, belied their actual environmental policy.

“Here’s just one example from last year,” he said.

“British Gas encouraged customers to go paperless – let’s please recognise the absolute absurdity of this message, coming from the fossil fuel industry.”

Tame then cited paper’s high European recycling rates, the fact that forests are growing in Europe, where much of European pulp is grown, and the fact that electronic devices rely on extractive mining of non-renewable materials and are rarely recycled.

“The environmental impact of our ever-increasing digital world can’t be ignored,” he said.

“The ICT industry accounts for 5-9% of energy use globally, and it’s estimated it could increase to 14% of global emissions by 2050.”

Newman stepped up next to respond, focusing on digital media’s potential sustainability.

“Nearly 90% of [her company, PubMatic’s] energy useage is from the data centres used to process ads. But our UK data centre – like all our collocation data centres globally,” is powered exclusively by renewable energy,” she fired back.

“Additionally, the transparency of data-driven marketing operations, where every process can be logged, allows participants to take proactive action to drive carbon reduction.”

The debate’s insights were not limited to the speakers, however, with some of the liveliest analysis coming from the debate floor.

Anna Krutova, a communications consultant, countered the motion by leaning on her own experiences as a Ukrainian.

“I have a very vivid example of why paper is not safe, because when a city gets burned, and governmental institutions get burned, there is no safe haven for printed copies [of documents].

“[Documents of record] can get burned, the building can be flooded.”

She added: “Thank God, when people had to flee the country, that they didn’t have to take their passport, their diploma – they could have it on their phone, digitally: so for a medium of record, I’m definitely for digital.”

The IPIA’s own general manager, Brendan Perring, then stood to defend the printed word: while print may be static, he said, that is no bad thing for a medium of record.

He said: “One of the best things about digital is that you can go back, you can change and edit. You can move meaning around – and that, perhaps, is a weakness of digital as well.

“In a world where moral integrity is under threat, the meaning of truth is under threat, digital needs an ally.”

In what was then noted as the first poem read at one of The Debating Group’s meetings, Perring recited a 1932 ode to print by Beatrice Warde, This is a Printing Office.

The motion was carried in favour of print by a clear – and increased – majority.